Lewis M. Dabney III papers on Edmund Wilson; William Faulkner and the Yoknapatawpha; and Crystal Ross and John Dos Passos.

Access and use

Location of collection:
University of Virginia, Special Collections Dept.
Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library
University of Virginia
P.O. Box 400110
160 McCormick Rd
Charlottesville, Virginia 22904-4110
Contact for questions and access:
POC: Brenda Gunn
Phone: (434) 924-1037
Phone: (434) 243-1776
Fax: (434) 924-4968
Restrictions:

This collection is open for research.

Terms of access:

Photocopy cannot be reproduced per restrictions of Princeton University

Photocopy cannot be reproduced

Preferred citation:

MSS 16566, Lewis M. Dabney III papers, Small Special Collections Library, University of Virginia.

Summary

Extent:
19 Cubic Feet 12 cubic boxes, 7 letter size document boxes, 2 legal-sized document boxes, oversize materials
Creator:
Dabney, Lewis M.
Language:
English French
Preferred citation:

MSS 16566, Lewis M. Dabney III papers, Small Special Collections Library, University of Virginia.

Background

Scope and content:

The Lewis M. Dabney III papers consist of manuscripts, notes, transcripts, articles, reviews, personal journals, bibliographic sources, audio cassettes, and compact discs, relating primarily to his research on the life and works of Edmund Wilson, an American writer and critic in the twentieth century. In addition to copies and transcripts of Wilson's writing journals, there is correspondence across a large network of intimate relationships, friends, and acquaintances of Wilson. The relationships of particular historical importance include F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, John Dos Passos, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Mary McCarthy, W.H. Auden, André Malraux, Vladimir Nabokov, Ignazio Stone, and Isaiah Berlin. The audiocassetes contain interviews completed by Wilson or Dabney on Wilson. (Boxes 1-17)

The collection also contains items related to a historical and literary study of William Faulkner's treatment of the Yoknapatawpha people in Faulkners' works. (Boxes 18-20). Included is the manuscript for Dabney's book, The Indians of Yoknapatawpha.

Also included in the collection is an examination of the lifelong friendship between Dabney's mother, Crystal Ross, and the American novelist, John Dos Passos. Most of their correspondence takes place from 1922 to 1927, during the peak of their romantic relationship. (Boxes 21-22). The letters mention Dos Passos travels in Paris, New Orleans, Florida, Key West, Mexico, Russia, as well as his life in New York City and Brooklyn. Crystal Ross, from Lockhart, Texas was educated at the University of Texas, Columbia University, and received her doctorate in comparative literature through a scholarship at the University of Strasbourg in Alsace in 1925. The couple met at the funeral of their mutual friend Wright McCormick. The letters mention well known writers such as Ernest Hemingway (with Hadley Hemingway) and F. Scott Fitzgerald (and Zelda) as well as a description of their trip to Pamplona, Spain in 1924. Dos Passos was writing Manhattan Transfer during the time of their engagement. Excerpts from their unpublished letters have been released in a new book by Lewis Dabney, Soulmates of the Lost Generation published by his family and the University of Virginia Press on October 25, 2022.

"The Inevitable Literary Biography: With the Usual Apologies to Arthur Symons, Holbrook Johnson, and Frank Harris" "How Akmen Amused the Princess: A Wonder Tale in Rhythmic Prose by Lord D-NS-NY" April (fiction) Eugene Brieux's "Les Americains Chez Nous: A Review of a Much Talked about Play," May "The Progress of Psychoanalysis," August "The Gulf in American Literature: A Discussion of the Irreconcilable Breach between the Illiterates and the Illuminati," September "Things I Consider Overrated: Some Popular Institutions Subjected to a Purely Destructive Criticism," October "The Anarchists of Taste," October "Things I Consider Overrated," second series, December

"Things I Consider Underrated: Three Little Essays in Constructive Criticism," March "The New Englander Abroad: With an Account of Nathaniel Hawthorne's Infidelity to the Venus di Medici," April "The Oppressor," Found in: The Liberator (May) pp25-28 (short story) "H.L. Mencken," Found in: New Republic (June)

"The Aesthetic Upheaval in France: The Influence of Jazz in Paris and Americanization of French Literature and Art," February "The Ballets of Jean Cocteau," March "Night Thoughts in Paris: A Rhapsody" Found in: New Republic (March) "The Poetry of Mr. W.B. Yeats" Found in: The Freeman, March 29 These United States- V, "New Jersey: The Slave of Two Cities" Found in: Nation 114 (June) Review of James Joyce Ulysses, Found in: New Republic, July Review of Edith Wharton Glimpses of the Moon, September "Mr. Bell, Miss Cather and Others," October (joint review) "Two Young Men and an Old One," November (joint review) "From Maupassant to Mencken," December (joint review) "The Poetry of Drouth," review of T.S. Eliot "The Wasteland" Found in: The Dial, December

"The School of Strachey" January (joint review) "Songs without Music: Notes on Current American Poetry and Biography," February "Things I consider Underrated," March "Ballads and Blast-Furnaces: Notes on Industry, Folk-lore, Criticism, and Poetry," March (joint review) "Many Marriages" review of two novels and a collection of essays by Sherwood Anderson, Found in: Dial, April "Sherwood Anderson's Babbitt: Novels and a Book of Essays," April (joint review) "A Selection of Bric-a-Brac: Notes on Contemporary Fiction," June "A New Red Badge of Courage: Notes on Recent Fiction and Poetry," July (joint review) "America and Other Tragedies: Notes on Recent Criticism and Fiction," August "Two Pairs of Lovers: Notes on Recent Poetry, Biography and Fiction," September (joint review) "Harvard, Princeton, and Yale," Found in: Forum (September) "Non-Euclidean Mathematics and Fiction: Notes on Recently Published Books," October "A Guide to Gertrude Stein: The Evolution of a Master of Fiction into a Painter of Cubist Still-Life Prose," September "The Real Religion of the Witches: A Note on Miss Margaret Murray's Theory of the Witch Cult in Western Europe," October Reviews of J.W. Mackail Virgil and His Meaning to the World Today and Tenney Frank Virgil: A Biography, Found in: Dial, November "The Atom, The Bow-Boy, and Tennyson" Reviews of Louise Bogan, Carl Van Vechten, and Harold Nicholson, November Preface to Rousseau's Confessions

"Wanted: A City of Spirit: Reflections upon the Spiritual Problems Which Confront the Younger Generation in America," January (Wilson's last piece in Vanity Fair)

"Bernard Shaw since the War," Found in: New Republic, August

Review of Herbert S. Gorman James Joyce: His First Forty Years, Found in: Dial, November

Reviews of Karl P. Harrington Catullus and His Influence and Grant Showerman Horace and His Influence, found in: Dial, February

"The Last Phase of Anatole France," 11 February

"Notes on Modern Literature," 4 March

"W.B. Yeats," 15 April

"Boswell and Others," 1 July

"A Novel of Henry Adams [Democracy]," 11 October

"The Critic as Politician." 2 December (reprinted as "The Critic Who Does Not Exist" in The Shores of Light)

"A.N. Whitehead and Bertrand Russell," 30 December Introduction to Ernest Hemingway In Our Time

"T.S. Eliot and the Seventeenth Century," 7 January

"Kipling's Debits and Credits," 6 October

"Anti-Literature," 13 October

Satire on "A Publisher's List" Found in: New Republic, 27 October

"Modern Literature: Between the Whirlpool and the Rock," November

Review of Dorothy Parker Enough Rope, January

Review of J.W.N. Sullivan Aspects of Science: Second Series, 26 January

Reviews of John Galsworthy Plays: Sixth Series, Representative Plays and Verse New and Old, 9 February

Review of Pelham Edgar Henry James, Man and Author, 16 March

Review of The Oxford Book of Eighteenth Century Verse, edited by David Smith, 30 March

Review of Gertrude Stein Composition as Explanation, The Making of Americans, and Three Lives, 13 April

"A.N. Whitehead: Physicist and Prophet," 15 June

"A Nation of Foreigners," editorial on Sacco and Vanzetti case, 5 October

"Proust and Yeats," October

"Anatole France's Successor," portrait of Paul Valery, 21 December

"Meditations on Dostoyevsky: Bad Quarter Hour of a Literary Critic," 24 October (Largely incorporated in I Thought of Daisy, 1929)

Comments on Sacco-Vanzetti in Lantern

"An Antidote to Despair," review of Walter Lippmann A Preface to Morals, Found in: New Republic, 10 July

"What Do the Liberals Hope For?" Found in: New Republic 10 February

"Critics of the Middle Class I. Karl Marx," Found in: New York Herald- Tribune Books, 14 February

"Critics of the Middle Class II Gustave Flaubert," Found in: New York Herald-Tribune Books, 21 February

"Critics of the Middle Class III Bernard Shaw," Found in: New York Herald-Tribune Books, 28 February

"Brokers and Pioneers," Found in: New Republic, 23 March

"The Literary Class War: I," Found in: New Republic, 4 May

"The Literary Class War: II," Found in: New Republic, 11 May

"Anatole France," Found in: New Republic, 7 September

"John Morley," Found in: New Republic, 14 September

"Lytton Strachey," Found in: New Republic, 21 September

"Lincoln Steffens and Upton Sinclair," Found in: New Republic, 28 September

"Marxist History," Found in: New Republic, 12 October

"Trotsky," Found in: New Republic, 4 January

"Trotsky II," Found in: New Republic, 11 January and Republic, 5 April

"Detroit Paradoxes," Found in: New Republic, 12 July

"The Last of Lytton Strachey," Found in: New Republic, 13 December

Edmund Wilson Journal 13, notes on Hitler's anti-Semitism and also Wilson family situation

"The Old Stone House," [1933] with others' articles on same

Introduction to Andre Malraux "The Conquerors" Found in: Modern Monthly (March)

"The Kipling of Westward Ho!" Found in: New Republic (24 March)

"Equity for Americans" review of Theodore Dreiser Tragic America, Found in: New Republic, (30 March)

"Russia: Escape from Propaganda," Found in: The Nation, 13 Nov. (joint review)

"Stalin, Trotsky, and Willi Schlamm," Found in: The Nation, 11 December (with Dabney notes)

"Vienna: Idyll and Earthquake," Franz Hoellering The Defenders, Found in: New Republic (26 August)

"Return of Ernest Hemmingway" Hemmingway For Whom the Bell Tolls, Found in: New Republic (28 October)

2 CDs

CD

2 audiocassettes

Includes dream journal 1961

Frances (Anna in the novels); Henri and Louise Fort; Margaret; Detroit; Fitzgeralds.

Tonawanda story

Includes typed story Deganswida's prophecy as told by Mad Bear (Wallace Anderson). Miscellaneous playbills

Don Stewart comments about Hemingway, Dos Passos, and Fitzgerald. Lillian Hellman and Nathaniel West; Wellfleet Cape Cod; Zoologist and mammals at Tayhill; Sinclair Lewis; Menchen; Harry De Silva; Jim Thurber; Talcottville

Included in the correspondence is a memorial about Cabell Greet written by David Allan Robertson, Jr. in 1973

Included is typed page from Wilson's book, The Thirties: From Notebooks and Diaries of the Period with handwritten notes by Lewis Dabney about John Dos Passos views on marriage.

Included is correspondence with biographer Townsend Ludington.

Grades of Crystal Ross Dabney when a student at the University of Texas; photocopy of [Bumby] Hemingway baptism; obituary of Dr. Alonzo Ross; greeting cards; and Dallas tax receipts for Lewis Dabney.

Photographs of John Dos Passos; Crystal Ross Dabney; Lewis Dabney; and picture and proof of American citizenship for Crystal Ross

Biographical / historical:

Lewis Meriwether Dabney III, a noted literary academic and scholar, was born on February 28, 1932 in Dallas, Texas to Lewis Dabney, Jr., a lawyer, and Crystal Ray Ross, an academic scholar. Dabney lived in Washington, D.C. and New York City in his early years before attending Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania. Following his undergraduate studies, Dabney completed post-graduate coursework at Emory University and earned a Ph.D. in English from Columbia University. As a doctoral student, Dabney developed an interest in the life and works of Edmund Wilson, one of the most prolific critics and cultural commentators of 20th century America, and completed his dissertation, "Edmund Wilson: The Early Years", which explored his earlier professional works and activities.

As a professor, Dabney taught at Smith College and Vassar College before moving to the University of Wyoming where he remained for over 30 years. Throughout his professional career, Dabney spent more than 40 years involved in the study and research of the life and works of Wilson. He edited and wrote the introduction for The Portable Edmund Wilson (1983, revised and updated 1997),The Sixties: The last Journal 1960-1972(1993), Centennial Reflections(1997), and Edmund Wilson: A Life in Literature (2005), an extensive biography.

Dabney also completed an early academic study, The Indians of Yoknapatawpha, on William Faulkner's treatment of indigenous people in his literature.

Before his death on December 22, 2015, he completed a manuscript Soulmates of the Lost Generation about the lifelong friendship between his mother, Crystal Ross Dabney and the American novelist, John Dos Passos.The manuscript was published with the help of his family on October 25, 2022 by the University of Virginia Press, Charlottesville, Virginia.

Acquisition information:
This collection was a gift of Sarah Dabney, Elizabeth Dabney Hochman, and Lewis Dabney (son) to the Small Special Collections Library, University of Virginia on January 21, 2021.
Arrangement:

This collection is currently arranged into fourteen series, and most of the series have multiple sub-series. The series are arranged in the order given by the donor.

Series I-XII is Lewis Dabney's research on Edmund Wilson. Series XIII is Faulkner papers on the Yoknapatawpha in Faulkner's literature, and Series XIV is material related to the relationship between Crystal Ross Dabney and John Dos Passos. The arrangement of the series is as follows:

Series I: Biographical Information, c. 1895-2007 (Box 1)

Series II: Early Literary Career, c. 1920-2002 (Box 2)

Series III: The War Years and 1950s: Memoirs and Fiction, c. 1941-1997

Series IV: Later Literary Career, c.1917-2001 (Box 2-3)

Series V: Posthumous Publications, c. 1960-2002 (Box 3)

Series VI: Human Relationships, c. 1920-1992 (Boxes 3-5)

Series VII: Topical Files, c. 1920s-1992 (Boxes 5-6)

Series VIII: Literary Settings and Institutions, c. 1930-2008 (Box 6)

Series IX: Major Literary Relationships, c. 1920s-1999 (Boxes 6-7)

Series X: Interview Notes and Oral Histories, c. 1959- 2005 (Boxes 7-9)

Series XI: Lewis Dabney, c. 1960s-2007 (Boxes 9-13)

Series XII: Edmund Wilson's Journals (Boxes 13a-17)

Series XIII: Dabney papers on Yoknapatawpha in Faulkner stories (Boxes 18-20) Subseries 1. Manuscripts Subseries 2. Correspondence Subseries 3. Research and Notes Subseries 4. Talks and Reviews

Series IV materials related to the relationship between Crystal Ross and John Dos Passos (Boxes 21-22). Subseries 1. Correspondence Subseries 2. Articles and reviews Subseries 3. Lewis Dabney (son) manuscript Soulmates of the Lost Generation Subseries 4. Lewis Dabney (father) career and colleagues Subseries 5. Memorabilia and photographs

Physical description:
Good
Rules or conventions:
Describing Archives: A Content Standard